"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said. "Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product."

According to Poon, many of Ford's most experienced engineers retired or left the company before decades of manufacturing knowledge had been incorporated into its AI systems. The technical specialists now help identify quality issues before production begins, mentor younger engineers and improve the data used to train AI tools.

Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said Ford also has moved away from a "find-and-fix" approach to quality control that identified problems after they reached the factory floor.

Instead, technical specialists now lead mandatory design reviews and look for potential failure points before parts ever reach production.

The changes coincide with Ford earning the top ranking among mainstream automakers in the 2026 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, the company's first No. 1 finish in 16 years.

Despite the shift, Ford executives said the company is not backing away from AI. Instead, the automaker is using experienced engineers to improve the quality of the data and expertise that AI systems rely on, positioning the technology as a tool that complements human experience rather than replacing it.